Posts Tagged Over A Cup Of Coffee

Just to keep you abreast of what is going on with my second site, the First Class Blogger Award Blog

We launched the site on December 26, 2010 and gave the award to eight sites. They are listed below. We got a warm welcome from lots of people so far and we hope to continue awarding great sites with the award. If you get the chance stop by the site and let us know what you think. Here are the first week’s recipients!

I must first thank you Cherlyn (above) for deciding to not only be a guest blogger but for doing so less than two weeks before post date. My other guests have known months in advance sometimes and had all that time to gather their thoughts and compose an awesome post. You did it and it was a great post.

I can tell you put a lot of thought into the feelings you typed on your keyboard. I’m glad you are happy now and I hope you continue to be happy (and I’m not lying). I too have been happy lately because first, The Most Beautiful Girl In The World post was so well received, second because it appears that I am back on schedule with my first Saturday of the month Guest posts, and thirdly and most importantly, my wife April is whole again. I surely hope she never gets that sick again.

Sometimes we find it difficult to be honest to ourselves let along anyone else. I hope your post can help others in their personal trials come to grips with the struggles they face and have great success overcoming their short comings. April asked me to tell you she is very impressed with your Clear Reflection poem. One day I might be able to get her to sign up for WordPress and make her own comments. Merci beaucoup.

If you missed her post yesterday please take a minute and read it. I would also like to thank all who left comments. I appreciated them and I’m sure Cherlyn did as well. I do not have a confirmed guest for October however there are two people interested.

Please join me in welcoming Cherlyn Cochrane, an admitted coffee addict, to Morning Erection. Being happy is at the forefront of most of our thoughts on a daily basis and in the back of our minds as well. Enjoy her post and please remember her guest post here is a sacrifice because it means she neglected her own blog and spent time thinking of a great post for us. As always, it is a great honor for me to be able to have a guest blogger. As a favor to me please show Cherlyn the courtesy of leaving lots of comments and visit her site too. Thanks..

Honestly Happy

Before I begin I would like to just say thank you to Tom for allowing me this opportunity to be guest blogger for the month of September. It gives me a warm, bubbly feeling inside that something that I’ve written and put my heart into has been able to inspire others. It’s much more than I expected to ever happen with my written works, but it is an absolutely welcome feeling.

I wasn’t quite sure what to write about at first, and I thought that the best thing I could to do was to share a little of my own blog with Tom’s readers. A lot of what I do at Over a Cup of Coffee is try to express myself like I would when I’m going out for a cup of coffee in real life – whether it be discussing my feelings and thoughts with a friend, talking about silly facts, or even writing poems for myself. The past two months I have been doing a lot of internal reflecting about who I am and what others perceive me to be. Tom has already mentioned exquisitely in his post The Most Beautiful Girl in the World , something that I feel very strongly about as well (great minds do think a like after all). And don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you (or at least try not to) with reiterating the same things Tom already talked about, because I couldn’t have worded it better than he did.

Some of you may not know this, but people lie on average three to five times in a ten minute conversation. I was a little surprised when I heard this. Well that’s an understatement – I thought it was a load of bull and convinced myself that I never do that.

“Mirror” by Mia aka eatmeupinside

I of course was lying to myself, so what does that tell you? Since I’ve been back living in my home town, I’ve started to realize that maybe that fact isn’t completely unjustified. Do you ever feel as though you have a certain “face” to wear in front of certain people, and another to wear in front of another group of people? Do we hide part of who are from a group of friends because we feel like they will judge us? Do we pretend to like something we don’t to appear compatible with a potential partner?

All those questions started invading my thoughts every time I was out with friends or sitting with my family, or meeting someone knew. And trust me, I already have enough weird questions going through my mind without answers, I didn’t need these ones floating around up there. Of course the answer to all those questions is a yes, and trying to convince myself otherwise was naive. I think the more important question is, why do we do it, and is it a bad thing?

I have two scopes of thought on those questions. By the way, yes I totally ask myself questions like these when I’m alone drinking coffee. I am one complex lady.

The first strain of thought is that we do it because we are so eager to be accepted by others that we tell small lies here and there that will make ourselves look better. The lies may not be full lies, but perhaps just an exaggeration of the truth. Is it a bad thing? If the lie doesn’t hurt anyone, then no. But then, that other darker half of me pipes in with: we do it because we don’t accept ourselves, and we lie to make others accept us instead. With this perspective, I think it is a very bad thing.

Though I don’t want to appear a “glass half empty” type of person, I tend to lean towards the second point of view. And it’s only because in the past few months I’ve actually started to understand myself and who I am. I’m a liar, just like everyone else.

I used to lie to myself all the time. I’d lie that I felt strong, that I could take on everything and anything all by myself. I would force myself to believe I was ugly, and worthless, and terrible. I used to tell myself I could only rely on myself. To certain friends I presented myself with the image of a strong, good listener. To others it was the easy going joker type. It wasn’t until I realized that I, like so many others, wore different faces or different masks; and when you’re lying to yourself and to others about who you are, you start to forget who you really are. And I had forgotten who I was.

"Happy Milk" by Elcin Temel aka hippychick7 from deviantart.com

With all my inane ramblings and incoherent jumbled thoughts, I hope someone out there takes the time to look into their own reflection. Do you see someone you know? Do you see what others see? Is your reflection foreign to you? Once I started admitting to myself the truth about how I felt, or what I thought, I found it easier to open up (which was a very hard thing for me to do). And to be perfectly honest, I haven’t felt happier.

There’s nothing wrong with saving face; but when you start to lie to yourself and others, you start to crack that reflection of yours, and you lose that clear, crisp image of yourself. And maybe we truly lie to ourselves when we are not happy with who we are. If you look into your reflection and see something you do not like, take the time to figure out why. There’s more to it than just “I feel fat”, or “I feel ugly”. If you feel good about yourself, for who you are, and not what society and others want you to be – you will feel good about what you see, and just maybe that reflection of yours will smile back at you. Happiness doesn’t stem from just what our appearance is. Example: I’m not unhappy because I’m overweight, I’m overweight because I’m unhappy. I won’t be happy if I lose weight, rather I need to be happy before I can ever lose weight. Or it won’t ever happen.

My advice to anyone out there, who believes from time to time that they are worthless, or that no one cares and that you have to take care of yourself – don’t lie to yourself, because no one is worthless, and there is always someone there for you if you look for it. You deserve happiness, don’t let yourself or anyone else convince you otherwise.

Below is a poem I wrote with those thoughts in mind – and I hope you enjoy it. Thank you so much again for reading, I hope I gave you something to think about. Thank you Tom for having me here this month, it was an honour!

Clear ReflectionAvoid the looking glass; it haunts.
Sense its malice as it taunts.
Reflecting what you wish not to see –
but you are blind to true beauty.

Judge your face and your physique –
for every flaw an equal critique.
But the reflection shows within your eyes
just how much the mirror lies.

What you hold to be pure and grade,
is nothing more than just a face.
Truth of beauty lies within –
it is deeper than our skin.

A mirror (like our soul) can break;
and its reflection can be fake.
Do not dissect your defects,
look beyond what the mirror reflects.

“Feline Reflection” by Diana M. aka ladyspunky on deviantart.com

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About Cherlyn Cochrane aka cursemymetalbody

I live in Burlington, ON, Canada. I’m a recent graduate of the Food and Nutrition Program at Fanshawe College, and apart from looking for a job, I’m not up to too much lately! I enjoy movies, books, reading, writing, music, the internet, games – and especially coffee.